Five reasons why Silicon Valley is the show to watch this summer

Home to many of the world’s largest technology corporations Silicon Valley is also the inspiration behind creator Mike Judge’s new television show.

While Judge may have made a name for himself spawning Beavis And Butt-head in the early 90s, as well as King Of The Hill in the late 90s, he hits the hilarity jackpot again with an insightful, tongue-in-cheek parody of IT corporations while following the attempts of fictional start-up.

And it’s way funnier than The Big Bang Theory.

Here are five reasons why Silicon Valley is the show that’ll brighten up your summer:

1. You don’t need to be a computer programmer to get the jokes

While there might be a variety of references to ‘integrated multi-platform functionality’ or ‘minimum message transport layers’, the show speaks to the social media generation in a jargon that it can understand.

You’ll get a sense of what the programmers look and act like with one another as well as with their CEOs (pandering to the various cult of personality disorders pertaining to these settings) and the relationship between techies and members of the outside world.

Look out for Erlich Bachman. Brash and forceful, he has the best lines. During the intro scene where Kid Rock performs at an undisclosed IT company’sprivate party, Bachman quips to his team: ‘There’s 40 billion dollars of net worth walking around this party. Kid Rock is the poorest person here.’

3. It’s so accurate it makes computer programmers squirm

While it is not shot in the same documentary style as The Office, Silicon Valley is apparently so true to life that it is painful to watch for some.

A friend who lives in the area of Silicon Valley in California and wishes to remain anonymous recently wrote under one of my enthusiastic posts about this show: ‘I’m going out with a programmer. Sometimes, this show is just too close to life. #Painful #LOL.’

That may just be it, but to us who don’t live in Nerd Central, Silicon Valley (the TV show) is simply hilarious.

4. Did we mention it was funny?

In episode one, CEO of Hooli, Gavin Belson provides a description of his company’s staff members to his spiritual guru.

‘That’s weird,’ he begins while staring intensely through a window at different groups of employees from the height of his office. ‘They always travel in groups of five, these programmers – there is always a tall skinny white guy, a short skinny Asian guy, fat guy with a ponytail, some guy with crazy facial hair and then an East Indian guy. It’s like they trade guys until they all have the right group.’

5. It’s got heart (sort of)

Whether these corporations are conducting their business through ‘constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code re-use and extensibility’ or through ‘minimum message transport layers’ while exploitingthe fame, and media muscle of celebrities such as Kid Rock, Barack Obama or Shakira, their main objective appears to be about making the world a better place.

And in Hooli’s CEO, Gavin Belson’s words from one of his internal circuit ads: ‘We can only achieve greatness if, first, we achieve goodness.’ Ahhhhh, that old chestnut.

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